What is the Casimir Effect?

The Casimir effect is a small attractive force that acts between two close parallel
uncharged conducting plates. It is due to quantum vacuum fluctuations of
the electromagnetic field.

The effect was predicted by the Dutch physicist Hendrick Casimir in 1948.
According to the quantum theory, the vacuum contains virtual particles which are in a
continuous state of fluctuation (see physics FAQ article on virtual particles). Casimir realised
that between two plates, only those virtual photons whose wavelengths fit a whole number
of times into the gap should be counted when calculating the vacuum energy. The
energy density decreases as the plates are moved closer, which implies that there is a
small force drawing them together.

The attractive Casimir force between two plates of area A separated by a
distance L can be calculated to be,

π h c
F = ------- A
480 L4

where h is Planck's constant and c is the speed of light.

The tiny force was measured in 1996 by Steven Lamoreaux. His results were in
agreement with the theory to within the experimental uncertainty of 5%.

Particles other than the photon also contribute a small effect but only the photon
force is measurable. All bosons such as photons produce an attractive Casimir force
while fermions make a repulsive contribution. If electromagnetism was supersymmetric
there would be fermionic photinos whose contribution would exactly cancel that of the
photons and there would be no Casimir effect. The fact that the Casimir effect
exists shows that if supersymmetry exists in nature it must be a broken symmetry

According to the theory the total zero point energy in the vacuum is infinite when
summed over all the possible photon modes. The Casimir effect comes from a
difference of energies in which the infinities cancel. The energy of the vacuum is a
puzzle in theories of quantum gravity since it should act gravitationally and produce a
large cosmological constant which would cause spacetime to curl up. The solution to
the inconsistency is expected to be found in a theory of quantum gravity.

Some examples

Let's see how big the force really is in practice. Since L is in the
denominator, the bigger L gets, the smaller the force will be; and because the
force goes as the fourth power of L, the drop-off with increasing distance will
be really huge. So let's make L small—say, one micron—together with big
one-square-metre plates:

or 1.3 mN. Now, since the weight of 1 kg is about 10 N, then 1.3 mN is the weight
of 0.13 grammes. Which is pretty small, but measurable, except that putting two 1
square metre plates a micron apart would be difficult in practice. But using smaller
plates leads to smaller forces. For instance plates with area 1 square
centimetre placed 1 millimetre apart would feel a force equivalent to
the weight of 10−17 grammes, which is vastly smaller!